Globalization Essay: Culture

Introduction

Globalization has gradually become inevitable in the contemporary world. As countries are becoming increasingly interconnected especially with the transmission of knowledge and information through media technologies, many countries face the threat of cultural loss (Suárez-Orozco & Hilliard, 2004).

In the past, Americanization seems to be the dominant culture of globalization due to its wide spread of global organizations, which includes McDonald and Starbucks, in different parts of the world (Global Envision, 2006). Besides venturing organizations internationally, intangible popular culture and music also influence people heavily in the global village. Although in today’s context, globalization is no longer solely represented by America culture (Meunier, 2010), the flow of people and rise in media still place an influence among countries.

Thus, in order to preserve indigenous culture, countries made attempts such as promoting a common language to be used locally as well as emphasizing the importance of having cultural identity.

Promoting the use of Dialect

Language is considered as one of the tangible cultures that has to be present in every nation where communication exists. In Singapore, culture preservation is the main focus due to its multi-culturalism nature. Bi-lingual Policy adopted stresses the use of English as a neutral language across the different ethnic groups as well as learning its own language to cultivate the individual ethnic culture (Tham, 1996). However, the effectiveness of such attempt might be hindered with the current trend of ageing population Singapore which most of the elderly speak in dialect. Unfortunately, under the influence of the government policy, today’s younger generation has already lost their ability to speak their own dialect due to the lack of exposure. Ironically, instead of dialect, other countries' native languages such as Japanese and Korean are offered in school for the students to learn. Some of these languages are also graded in which might reflect the significance of those languages on par with other core subjects.

Therefore, it is important to review the effectiveness of policies in achieving its goal in preserving local culture while at the same time allowing globalization to take place for the countries' economic benefits. Countries can therefore stress the importance of dialects as well to the indigenous people and allow it as an option for the younger generation to learn. This not only help to avoid the loss of culture but also aid in building a stronger relationship and bond across generations.

Promoting Cultural Identity

Besides, governments have been very active in building cultural identity for its citizens to stay grounded and rooted. Taking Singapore as an illustration again, strong emphasis is placed on cultivating cultural identity through embedding compulsory subject such as the National Education (Ritter, 2013) in schools as well as encouraging citizens to participate in the yearly National Day celebration.

Although the government has proposed these extensive efforts in stressing the importance of having cultural identity, the effectiveness of these approaches might not guarantee the most optimal result. Hence, it might be more useful for the nations to do public education not restricting to only students but instead to the nation as a whole. Moreover, through having an open discussion with citizens on the ways they perceived to be better in promoting such identity can help to increase the willingness and foster a stronger sense of ownership in creating identity within the nation.    

Conclusion

In all, although cultural loss might be a prominent threat to the nations when deal with globalization, it is still possible to preserve its culture by having the right approaches to deal with such issue. By encouraging dialect to be spoken in the country can definitely help to connect citizens better. Likewise, through having a strong cultural identity in the country, people are less likely to experience cultural loss.

620 Words

References

Global Envision. (2006). Americanization of Globalisation?. Retrieved 15 October, 2013, from: http://www.globalenvision.org/library/33/1273

Ritter, Z.S. (2013). Singapore’s Search for National Identity: Building a Nation throught Education. USA: American Jewish University.

Meunier, S. (2010). Globalization, Americanization and Sarkozy’s France.  Princeton: aWoodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University.

Suárez-Orozco, M. M, Hilliard, D. Q, (2004). Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium. London: University of California Press.

Tham, S.C. (1996). Cultural Forces and Counter Forces in Contemporary Singapore. Singapore: National University of Singapore.